University of Virginia Library

By Rod MacDonald

JP's Juggling Act

It has been a time-honored
practice of both speakers and
writers at the University to quote
Thomas Jefferson whenever they
need a supporting quotation for a
statement. In fact, a friend of mine
who wrote a paper on Mr. Jefferson's
ideas said last year "You can
use his statements to support
almost anything." s year the
ambiguity and ability of Jefferson
to take many sides of many issues
provides a clear indication of
something more - the role of the
fledgling Jefferson Party.

The new JP has a difficult
balancing act to play, for it
represents a more conservative side
of the University, when the students
voted last spring to support a
radical-liberal ticket headed by
Charles Murdock and Tom Gardner.
If that election, resulting in a near
sweep for the Virginia Progressive
Party can be taken as decisive, it
showed that most of the students
want more action and less stalling.

The caucuses, Skull and Key
and Sceptre, responded poorly to
the VPP thrust. They should have
known better, following a University
Party (then the liberal party)
victory in December, an Anarchist
victory the previous spring, and
another University Party sweep in
December 1967. But they came up
with candidates whose major platform
was based on "individual
responsibility." Such a doctrine is
mostly a technique of obfuscation,
allowing a conservative candidate
with a liberal audience to mask his
real thoughts on the issues behind a
concern for method and commitment.
The caucuses lost heavily,
and will probably pass out of
existence at their first meeting this
fall.

Out Of Ashes

Out of their ashes, technically a
caucus study committee headed by
this writer, came the Jefferson
Party. Based on a one-man one-vote
membership setup that precludes
fraternity vote-swapping dominance,
the new party hopes to
attract both independents and fraternity
men, and both conservatives
and moderates. But under President
Joel Gardner, the party will have to
do a difficult balancing act to win
any elections, for in drawing much
of its support from the conservative
students of fraternities, it may
alienate the more moderate segments
of the student body. And
although it has no official ideology,
the party will seem basically conservative
to most students who know
the officers: Mr. Gardner, Greg
Hodges, John Rose, and first-year
man Steve Edwards.

Recruit "Moderate"

Mr. Gardner asserts the party
will not be rigidly conservative, and
that he is trying hard to recruit
"moderate" and even liberal members
and potential candidates.
Whether he can succeed will be the
major test, for this writer believes a
purely conservative party will not
win. And with nominating meetings
set for November, time is running
out.

Another test for the party, as
for the VPP, will be how well it can
set up the machinery to bring
up-and-coming politicos up through
the ranks. The caucuses had the
IFC, the University Union, and
their myriad committees plus
fraternity membership itself as
selecting procedures for advancing
young prospects. The JP, with its
new de-emphasis on fraternity politics,
will not be able to capitalize
on those existing organs as well; it
will have to set up its own
bureaucracy; the only similar precedent,
by contrast, was the University
Party, which expired largely
because it failed to develop methods
to produce new leaders.

The JP hopes to overcome this
deficiency by establishing a committee
structure within itself, staring
with dormitory and fraternity
captains and reaching down
through several committees to deal
with many aspects of parties and
elections. But such a setup requires
many members, and the College's
wary politicos may opt to keep
their independence rather than
become tightly drawn members of a
party; such decisions would undermine
the new party's committee
structure by depriving it of those
students with the greatest potential.

Both the VPP and the JP face
these structural problems, however.
Unless one or the other can get vast
numbers of students to join, which
is probably unlikely, politics this
year may become battles between
two tightly knit organizations with
about 90 per cent of the voters
independent.

In such a situation the JP would
be at a disadvantage, for the VPP is
reasonably established and has
more glamor leaders such as Mr.
Murdock and Mr. Gardner. But the
JP has good chances for success -
many voters felt last year that the
VPP was excessively liberal and
high-handed in its electoral methods
- and if the new party can
turn those dissenters into active
supporters of itself the way will be
much easier. If the JP can form
such a power base, the College may
at last see the revival of two party
politics based on ideas.

But to get that broad support
the party must work hard, and it
must obey the ambiguities of
Thomas Jefferson. It must be both
conservative and moderate, at least;
and if it can win it may have to
nominate candidates more liberal
than most of the members to get
the dorm voters. In short, the JP is
being forced to be less rigid in its
ideology than it might be an more
actively broad-minded in seeking
members, and only if it resolves this
dualistic status successfully will it
last.